"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Florida Governor Rick Scott accused the elections supervisor of Palm Beach County of defying court orders to submit “overvoted” and “undervoted” absentee ballots to the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board. Meanwhile, Brenda Snipes, the Broward County supervisor of elections, “appeared” to meet a 7 p.m. deadline to turn over to Scott’s campaign an accounting of ballots that were cast in the county along with a breakdown by category.
Scott filed lawsuits in the two heavily Democratic counties Thursday night, accusing Democrats of a coordinated attempt to “steal” elections.
“I will not stand idly by while unethical liberals try to steal an election,” the governor said at a press conference outside the governor’s mansion, accusing Democrats of “rampant fraud” in his race against incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.).
Friday afternoon, a Florida judge ordered Snipes to allow Republicans to have “immediate” access to requested information about ballots in Broward County.
A Palm Beach circuit court judge also ruled in favor of Scott, granting an injunction ordering Palm Beach County supervisor of elections Susan Bucher to provide the absentee ballots to the canvassing board for a review of the votes before they are counted.
Late Friday evening, the Scott campaign accused Bucher of failing to comply with the order.
“Tonight, Palm Beach County supervisor of elections Susan Bucher announced that she is refusing to comply with a court order to submit overvotes and undervotes to the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board for review under the court-ordered deadline,” said Chris Hartline, a spokesman for the Scott campaign. “Susan Bucher has consistently refused to follow state law and comply with legally required deadlines and regulations. Whether it’s gross incompetence or intentional disregard for the rule of law is irrelevant at this point. Either way, it is embarrassing and unacceptable.”
A lawyer for the Scott campaign told reporters that Snipes had complied with her court order “in some fashion.”

Democrat Andrew Gillum withdrew his concession to Republican former Rep. Ron DeSantis in the Florida governor’s race on Saturday, hours after the secretary of state announced a recount of their race and two others.
“I am replacing my words of concession with an uncompromised and unapologetic call we count every single vote,” he said with the recount now underway.

Democrat Kyrsten Sinema retained a tight lead over Republican opponent Martha McSally in Arizona’s midterm election race to replace Jeff Flake in the U.S. Senate as of late Friday.
Maricopa County, Arizona’s far-and-away highest volume voting county, announced it had completed counting ballots Friday. The results bumped Sinema’s slight lead to one percent. Sinema’s lead only emerged after results of additional ballots counted were released late Thursday, two days after the Tuesday midterm election.
The Arizona Secretary of State reported as of Saturday 201,912 ballots cast at polling places, 629,067 early ballots, 1,714 provisional ballots, and 1,176,891 ballots cast in Maricopa County for a grand total of 2,009,584 total ballots counted.
Despite Sinema’s one percent lead over McSally as of Saturday, McSally led in both early ballot and polling place votes. Sinema’s lead came from Maricopa County and, in very small part, provisional ballots, according to Arizona Secretary of State records.
The controversy over ballot counting is not over as details of Maricopa County recorder Adrian Fontes’ history of public support for Democrats and Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders return to public attention. Several county Republican parties have filed a lawsuit against county recorders and the Secretary of State over the practice of calling voters after the election to verify signatures on mail ballots dropped at polling locations on election day.

Some readers may quibble with my characterization of the Florida and Arizona vote-count as “election theft,” but what would Democrats say if the situation were reversed? Because here you have Republicans who evidently won on election night having to watch Democrats still “finding” extra votes days afterward. Oh, and in Georgia:

The Democratic Party of Georgia tried purchasing airtime on Friday to run campaign ads on a local Atlanta channel on behalf of gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
Abrams and the Democratic Party attempted to buy a $250,000 advertisement on Atlanta-based WSB-TV in order to promote a gubernatorial runoff despite her Republican challenger, Secretary of State Brian Kemp, winning over 50 percent of the vote. In the state of Georgia, a runoff is only triggered if neither candidate reaches at least half of the total votes. . . .
Abrams’ campaign argued that they believe there will be enough votes to ultimately trigger a runoff.
“The Abrams for Governor campaign has promised the people of Georgia that we will fight to ensure that every vote is counted, and we will uphold that promise,” Abrams’ campaign said in a statement. “We believe that this race will head into a runoff and we are ready to engage with voters about Abram’s bold vision for our state the moment a runoff is declared.”

So expect Georgia Democrats to keep “finding” more votes until they have enough for Abrams to qualify for a runoff. It’s like magic.